Cultural differences in coping with interpersonal tensions lead to divergent shorter- and longer-term affective consequences

ABSTRACT

Culture influences how people cope with interpersonal tensions, with those from more collectivistic contexts (e.g. Chinese Americans (CA)) generally opting for strategies promoting social harmony whereas those from more individualistic contexts (e.g. European Americans (EA)) preferring confrontational strategies. The current study examined cultural differences in coping strategy choices and their linkages to immediate affective reactions and subsequent affective memories. Participants (N = 159) discussed hypothetical dilemmas with a disagreeable confederate matched by age group, gender, and cultural group. CA exhibited less positive affect reactivity (i.e. smaller decreases in positive affect) and greater positive affect recovery (i.e. greater increases in post-task positive affect) compared to EA, which was explained by CAs’ appraisals of greater emotional support from the confederate and lower endorsement of defending one’s opinions. In contrast, one week later, EA, but not CA, recalled experiencing more task positive affect and less task negative affect than originally reported. Cultural differences in negative affect memory discrepancies were explained by EAs’ greater tendency to defend their opinions, relative to CA. Culture shapes coping choices, which predict affective consequences over different time scales.

KEYWORDS:

• emotion regulation
• collectivistic coping
• stress and coping
• memory for emotion

Acknowledgements

We thank Jeanne Tsai, Tamara Sims, Birgit Koopmann-Holm, Louise Chim, Michael Boiger, and Adina Dumitrache for their helpful feedback on previous versions of this manuscript.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Data availability and open practices statement

The study reported in this article was not formally pre-registered. Neither the data nor the materials have been made available on a permanent third-party archive; requests for the data or materials can be sent via email to the lead author at [email protected].

Additional information

Funding

This research was supported by funding from the National Institute on Aging (R01AG023845 awarded to Susan Charles, and F31AG038283 and K01AG056660 awarded to Gloria Luong) and dissertation grants from the American Psychological Association, American Psychological Foundation/Council of Graduate Departments of Psychology, and the K. Alison Clarke-Stewart Dissertation Award.